Our research activity is divided into five axes. These axes do not represent disjoint subgroups, but rather thematic foci to which all team members may contribute at different times and to varying degrees. The first axis (“Conceptual Immunology”) investigates core concepts of immunology and puts forward an alternative view of the immune system beyond the idea of host defense. The second axis (“Cancer”) is dedicated to a deeper understanding of cancer that takes into account the role of the microenvironment, the evolutionary context, and the possible links to processes involved in aging. The third axis (“How aging causes age-related diseases”) addresses major conceptual problems concerning the mechanisms of aging and their relationship to age-related diseases. The fourth axis ( “Computational methods in biology and medicine”) aims at developing a conceptual framework to understand and facilitate the integration of computational methods in the biomedical sciences, notably in the context of immunology. Finally, the fifth axis (“Microbiome: symbiosis, immunity, and cancer”) proposes new theoretical tools to study the symbiotic relationships between organisms and their microbial communities.